THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
51 
minimum car of two hundred and fifty crates. Some 
{^rowers sell f. o. b. at their packing houses. Others ship 
to commission houses, while still others use the distributors 
to advantage. The growing of pineapples has always been 
a lucrative business in the past. While we have to meet 
Cuban competition in its severest form without relief to 
any extent from our own government in the way of duty, 
still the pineapple grower in his own small way has tried to 
“make good,” and with but few exceptions has succeeded. 
Our business, I regret to say, has some who are careless in 
the picking of green fruit, which has a demoralizing effect 
upon the market, though this is not practised by any means 
to the extent it is done in the orange industry. I am satis- 
here. Many nursery and florist firms buy them in carloads. 
For summer decorations, landscape work, roof gardens 
and formal gardens, nothing is more suitable than standard 
bays. Their close cli])ped circular heads impart an aristo¬ 
cratic tone to otherwise dull surroundings. Many nursery 
firms stand a few pairs around their offices and make of them 
not only a decoration, but a very practical advertisement, for 
these trees sell others. 
Price should not be a drawback to the increased use of 
these trees. A standard with a crown 30 inches in diameter 
costs only $5.00 per pair in Belgium, or approximately $8.50 
per pair F. O. B. New York on an import basis. How a 
Belgium firm can grow a tree ten years, hand trim it several 
A MAGNIFICENT BLOCK OF BAY TREES 
fied in my own mind that The Florida Citrus Exchange 
will eventually and entirely correct this unnecessary evil, 
while we hope for that same happy time in our own business. 
We have this protest to make to the fancy fruit dealer who 
sells our fruit to the man who eats it—that he fails to show 
the same up in its best form, allowing half rotten and withered 
fruit to clog up his stand, and thus give to the purchaser a 
poor opinion of our fruit. 
BAY TREES 
During the past few years importations of Bay Trees 
(Laurus nobilis) have been increasing at a fast rate. They 
arrive in the Eastern states from Belgium in Aprfi-May and 
in Pacific Coast and Southern states in September-October. 
As they come in tubs they are ready for display upon arrival 
times each summer, store it in glass-roofed, steam-heated 
sheds every winter, re-tub it many times, is a great question, 
when the price of wood and coal is considered, yet every little 
firm grows them, some of the larger finns carry ten to fifteen 
thousand of them in stock and export them to all civilized 
countries. 
McHutchison & Co., the import house of New \ork, 
recently issued a very attractive booklet, “Just Bays,” pic¬ 
turing all shapes in all sizes, which they will send on request 
to any finn in the trade writing on their business stationery. 
Enclosed find $1.00 to push my subscription ahead another year. 
Your paper is the best ever and cannot get along without it. 
Dodge Co. Nursery, 
Minn. W. E. Frver. 
